US former President Donald Trump lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday (Oct 12), saying that he was caught unprepared by Hamas’ attack and praising the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah as “very smart”.
The comments highlight the strained relationship between the two men and stand out at a time when Trump’s Republican presidential opponents have all tried to portray themselves as steadfast supporters of Netanyahu amid Israel’s conflict with Hamas.
“(Netanyahu) has been hurt very badly because of what’s happened here. He was not prepared. He was not prepared, and Israel was not prepared,” Trump told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade in an interview clip that aired Wednesday night. Trump went further at a campaign event in West Palm Beach, Florida.
“When I see sometimes the intelligence, you talk about the intelligence, or you talk about some of the things that went wrong over the last week, they’ve got to straighten it out because they’re fighting potentially a very big force,” Trump added.
“They’re vicious, and they’re smart. And, boy, are they vicious, because nobody’s ever seen the kind of sight that we’ve seen”, Trump said regarding Hezbollah, which the US and its allies have warned against escalating the current conflict.
Donald Trump and Netanyahu’s friendship
The criticism contrasts sharply with the close friendship Trump had with Netanyahu while in office when he embraced the Israeli prime minister at every opportunity. However, it’s motivated by the hostility Trump has had toward Netanyahu ever since the prime minister admitted in the open that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. In the months that followed, Trump accused Netanyahu of disloyalty and fumed to Axios, “F*** him.”
Trump eventually complimented Netanyahu once he took back office in the latter part of last year, but his hostility toward him hasn’t diminished, according to sources close to his thinking, according to CNN, and Trump continues to believe that Netanyahu shouldn’t have made comments regarding Biden’s victory.
Trump once more brought up his false claims of election fraud during the campaign event on Wednesday night, and he implied that the Hamas attack wouldn’t have occurred if he were president.
“If the election wasn’t rigged, there would be nobody even thinking about going into Israel,” the former president told his supporters.
He also invoked the US government’s 2020 killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and claimed Israel declined to participate in the strike.
“I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. That was a very terrible thing, I will say that,” Trump said.
At the time, however, Netanyahu praised the strike, saying it was justified because Soleimani “was planning further attacks.”
What Netanyahu has to say
When CNN pressed Netanyahu in his last interview with the network in September about whether the newfound hostility from Trump bothered him, the Israeli PM said, “I’ve been long enough in the political life to put aside the periodic ebb and flow of emotion and to look at the substantive positions that leaders and allies have done. … So, yeah, I don’t particularly care for that. I mean, I don’t care about it, is the way I would say it.”
Although Trump’s remarks about Netanyahu are personal, Israeli officials have acknowledged they were caught by surprise when Hamas launched its attack. Officials from the US have also claimed that, like Israelis, they did not receive any intelligence indicating that this particular attack would take place.
Trump was an ardent supporter of Netanyahu during his term. The Iran nuclear deal was finally terminated him in 2018, and he effectively sided with Israel in negotiations with the Palestinians by moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and approving the annexation of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem into Israel.
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(With inputs from agencies)
